) writes:
Honestly, I have enjoyed listening to shortwave for a number of years,
and still enjoy it very much. Radio Japan, BBC, Radio New Zealand,
CBC, Radio Tiawan, CHina...etc.

Approxiately how much longer will broadcast shortwave, be around? I
hear alot of people say its dying. And being an older technology,
perhaps it is. I know that most people my age, don't even know what a
shortwave radio is, or what it does. They have never even heard of
shortwave.

How much longer does it have?

Who knows? But you do realize that the imminent "death of shortwave"
was around in the early seventies when I first learned about shortwave
radio.

I suspect it's as easy, or even easier, to find a shortwave receiver
today than it was back in 1971 when I bought my first shorwave receiver.
Back then, you either could get really cheap multiband radios (ie
am/fm/policeband/some shortwave) as generic imports at the corner store,
or go to a specialty store to buy a receiver from one of the traditional
shortwave receiver manufacturers. Even cheap receivers are now easier to
use with digital tuning (albeit they may not be better performers than
the cheap ones of decades ago), and I think you can get a better receiver
for less than what it used to cost. And you can get them at Radio Shack,
or since mainstream companies are making them, at various other places.
Sony, for instance, because it sells all kinds of consumer electronics,
is better placed to get shortwave receivers into stores than in the
days of Hammarlund and Hallicrafters when they basically only had shortwave
receivers.

Michael